This is my first real work using LW2018. I'm really happy with the new surfacing workflow and I like the results of the new render engine as well. And I've never been happier with LW glass. :) I didn't have any issues with fireflies as I think I've got those figured out. But noise was still an issue and I wasn't able to completely remove it. I used a million instances on the carpet to give it some volume. Render times were outrageous IMO @ 8hr30min and 10hrs respectively. (Old i7-920 @2.67GHz) But I can't knock the results - very pleased. Still learning and hope to improve the render times and hoping NT can help out in that regard as well. Comments and ideas for speed increases welcome. :)

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Felipe Soto

03-20-2018, 09:52 PM

Beautiful work

wingzeta

03-21-2018, 12:46 AM

Wow! Looking good. Are the area lights in the room, and on the ceiling, just providing fill? The windows are portal lights?

Gungho3D

03-21-2018, 01:52 AM

Beautiful work

+1

You excel at these type of scenes and artwork Tim ...

Chris S. (Fez)

03-21-2018, 04:10 AM

Excellent.

Asticles

03-21-2018, 04:16 AM

Great!, so brute force?

samurai_x

03-21-2018, 04:38 AM

Lighting and surfacing looks nice. Too noisy and render time is sloooow.

Asticles

03-21-2018, 05:18 AM

I have also an i7 920 at home and it's not the fastest guy in the block.

samurai_x

03-21-2018, 05:29 AM

corei7 920, 430 cinema bench score. Not bad.
I'm still using some corei3 with 250 cb score.
But mainly for gpu rendering :D

Asticles

03-21-2018, 05:41 AM

Egpu?

aperezg

03-21-2018, 05:54 AM

Excellent work, how do you make the fireflies disappear?

Tim Parsons

03-21-2018, 08:21 AM

Thanks everyone.

Are the area lights in the room, and on the ceiling, just providing fill? The windows are portal lights?

I have a Sun light (Small area light) 3 or 4 hundred meters away and a area portal light just outside the window. I also have an area light just inside the window providing a general light spill. The ceiling light and outer two area lights provide fill. The center area light only illuminates the "Live Laugh Love" on the wall. I put a Spherical light in the lamp on the desk and gave the shade a subsurface and translucent component to its surface. (Really worked great - fast and easy compared to the crap I used to have to do for this type of thing.)

Great!, so brute force? Yes - no interpolation.

Excellent work, how do you make the fireflies disappear? Prudent use of the various sampling mostly in regards reflection samples.

Still more to learn and hopefully some ways to increase the overall speed of the renderer, but as far as getting good looking surfaces it's really seems to be fast and easy.

Vladimir545

03-29-2018, 07:44 PM

Hello Tim!

Great work!

8 hours very much yes even for corei7 920, I think you can reduce 2 times without much damage to the picture. and go out for 3-4 hours or even faster.

You have an interior, but the room's volume is open to the rays- Try to close the volume and use the portals- do solid polygon volume- cut -for windows, use 1-2 portals and overall try use less area lights if possibly - this will probably be enough./ such lights all sampled-this is the time and you have to remember this.

The second point. - Use the minimum samples for the camera.
This is a global parameter- and this multiplies everything in scene- and it is better to my opinion use a combination of low camera samples- 1/4 - 1/8- + Rl -Rf in 2 or more 4 or 6 for example - good start point for render.

You can combine denoizer filter and low gi samples also - but for me - bruteforce to fast- most penalty give- camera and light sampling.

If you not use Volume lights or any volume primitives or such Effects- turn V. Intregrator globally off -can add up to 5-10% speed up to

Inspect light samples and count of lights. You can exlude some surfaces from light. gi rays to- check geometry visibility.

I will express my opinion about new Lw 2018 render- just great- not slow- fast enough. gi and clean raytrace calculation to -can render in 2015 time-with better or same quality ,powerfull shading and lighting.

New Volume integrator just amazing-fast like hell and can use with volume primitives and lights for any idea and any effects. But the documentation of the program is very weak, and many things in the new version render have to be studied and guessed by yourself just in time - not obvious.

The rest should look at the materials and geometry in the your scene, do tests to say more precisely, where did you get such a strong penalty- from what.

You can post a scene for me in mail -if not scare - the project is commercial ?, I'll delete it after the tests, and it will not go anywhere. All your legal norms will be respected, I give my word.

Tim Parsons

03-29-2018, 09:50 PM

Thanks Vladimir. Yes, I have learned so much more in just the past week concerning rendering times and quality. I did extensive tests on a small scene and that was a revelation to me! Everything you say is right on point. :thumbsup: I bought two more 2018 upgrades today for our other team members and will be sharing what I have learned from my testing and the LW community to them over the coming weeks. Thanks for your input.

Matt

03-30-2018, 01:33 AM

Very accomplished work

Nicolas Jordan

03-30-2018, 12:35 PM

Looks pretty good. I do notice some stair stepping with pixels mostly around edges. You may want to try setting "Filter Radius" to 0.5 to help soften those a bit. This will probably add even more to your render time though.

Tim Parsons

03-31-2018, 04:16 PM

Very accomplished work

Thanks Matt. Same to you. :)

Looks pretty good. I do notice some stair stepping with pixels mostly around edges. You may want to try setting "Filter Radius" to 0.5 to help soften those a bit. This will probably add even more to your render time though.

Yep - all those issues I think can be alleviated with what I've learned since. If I ever get some time I'll adjust some settings and see what happens. :)

Tim Parsons

03-31-2018, 08:51 PM

Here is another piece I just finished. It's so easy to get great looking renders!!

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jbrookes

04-03-2018, 02:13 PM

Here is another piece I just finished. It's so easy to get great looking renders!!

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Nicely done.

It would be cool to see your render settings posted as it would be good for users new to LW2018 to learn from and would allow the ones who have been working with it more to help you optimize your render times.

Ztreem

04-03-2018, 03:27 PM

Here is another piece I just finished. It's so easy to get great looking renders!!

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Nice render, but the antialiasing is terrible.

Tim Parsons

04-03-2018, 07:43 PM

Nicely done.

It would be cool to see your render settings posted as it would be good for users new to LW2018 to learn from and would allow the ones who have been working with it more to help you optimize your render times.

It's actually a start scene I have been developing for our team to do their renders with.
I've included all the assets of the start scene attached below. You'll have to add your own models. :)

Nice render, but the antialiasing is terrible.

Yep. :) Min and Max samples are set at 1 and 2. :) I'm trying to find a happy medium between speed and quality. Once designs are worked out we'll go back and do a hi-res render and or an interior render with hi quality settings.
This is a WIP but we are very close to using 2018 in production.

Tim Parsons

04-16-2018, 06:25 PM

I had some free time so I came back to this to see if I could get the rendering time down. Previous time was over 8hrs!!! I was able to get it down to 1hr 37min 22sec and when I turned off the carpet fiber instances I got a render time of 26min 36 sec!!!! :thumbsup: A lot less noise too!! Thanks to all for the advice and learning material that has been offered on these forums and elsewhere.

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madno

04-16-2018, 11:41 PM

Nice!

Would you mind showing your settings?

Every4thPixel

04-17-2018, 12:57 AM

I had some free time so I came back to this to see if I could get the rendering time down. Previous time was over 8hrs!!! I was able to get it down to 1hr 37min 22sec and when I turned off the carpet fiber instances I got a render time of 26min 36 sec!!!! :thumbsup: A lot less noise too!! Thanks to all for the advice and learning material that has been offered on these forums and elsewhere.

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Cool render! I like what you did with the lamp material.
I would change the camera position a bit so you don't look through the drawer and the table top. An other small thing is the extremely dark shelf in the desk. I would expect it to catch some more light

Tim Parsons

04-17-2018, 07:37 AM

Nice!

Would you mind showing your settings?

Thanks.

First settings I used:
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Updated settings used:
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Notice I turned up the GI Rays from 16 to 32 and increased the light samples from 8 to 16 on all (8) lights.
I turned the camera samples way back. But I think the big difference maker was Interpolated GI. Although additional light samples really help with noise, I think the interpolated GI provided most of the smoothing in shadow areas.

Overall I was real pleased with difference in rendering time and similar if not better results.

Still more to learn and improve upon. :)

Cool render! I like what you did with the lamp material.
I would change the camera position a bit so you don't look through the drawer and the table top. An other small thing is the extremely dark shelf in the desk. I would expect it to catch some more light

Thanks. The lamp shade material is a simple procedural with some subsurface scattering. I agree with the dark shelf, something I need to be aware of going forward.

madno

04-19-2018, 11:25 PM

Thanks for the settings.
Have you tried a render with "Behind Test" off?